Make some good hotlinks though ....
Gunner
"I think this is because of your belief in biological Marxism. As a genetic communist you feel that noticing behavioural patterns relating to race would cause a conflict with your belief in biological Marxism." Big Pete, famous Usenet Racist
I lived in Alaska for 3 years and noted that lots of people build their own up there. They usually had no loans on the materials and built as they could - living in 5th wheelers or, when finished, their basements.
That's the way I feel about gardening. My parents were outside all weekend, every weekend (weather permitting). I paid no attention. Like you, I sure wish I had. Sue
someone, but it is becoming increasingly difficult in some areas to find someone to hire who will actually do the job correctly. In more and more cases I'm finding I have to do a job myself to get it done right.
In once case I had an auto repair done several times by several different dealers (some under warranty) that all failed again in short order. I finally got fed up and did the job myself, found evidence of how incompetent they were while tearing into it myself and have not had a recurrence of the problem since I fixed it correctly myself.
Pete C.
My neighbor has a 25' by 30' or so shed/mini barn. An Amish crew (we live in Ohio) came out and built it in one day, a couple of years ago. $6500 for 750 square feet; that's only $8 per square foot. It's a real beautiful structure with tons of overhead storage (it's a tall shed). He has a table saw and a planer and all the other toys in it. Speakers in the corners hooked to a stereo receiver. Wood burning stove. And if they ever sell their house, the shed is a huge selling point. Now to talk my wife into us getting one!
Societal collapse is a macro-scale event. What happens to individuals within that society are micro-level events. Individuals win and lose all the time, even in a thriving society. Whole groups have been caused to suffer many times by rapid changes within a complex society, yet the society as a whole endures.
It sucked to be a technology worker during the dot-com bust or an aeronautical engineer when we retreated from manned space exploration. It also sucked to be a buggy whip maker during the advent of the automobile.
Jeff
Many did, others didn't. Many an extension cord snaked it's way over a neighbor's fence. Life went on. We improvised, adapted and overcame. It was rougher for some than for others, but the local economy is booming, tax coffers are swelling, and local unemployment is below 3%.
Jeff
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com... | It has always concerned me when the young amoung us are not taugh basic | skills such as how to change a tire, how to use a saw, how to...well | you get the idea...there are basic skills that one needs to deal with | the world we live in. Well this article shows what that lack of | training, due to whatever reason, means as they get older. | | When I drive through a neighborhood, it is a rare garage that has | anything like a workshop within it anymore....a reflection of the lack | of interest or knowledge of the homeowner to work with their hands? | | Do your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the generation who | is succeeding us, have the basic skills that are needed in the world | today? | | TMT
The first thing that came to my mind was: You usually don't have to.
That brings us to my second point: If you don't have to, you'll never learn how. If you have to a lot, you'll even get good at it.
When I took driver's ed back in the 80's (okay, that puts me squarely in the middle of most of my peers nowadays, its seems) we had actual cutaway car components in the classroom. I had grown up sort of out in the country, so doing mechanical things weren't out of the ordinary for me, but my dad never taught me much, or not at least actual instruction that I recall. I think he was satisfied with me taking all kinds of stuff apart and figuring out how it worked, and even getting lucky in getting it back together again. If it worked afterwards, that was always a bonus. I think I just had the knack for things like that, and eventually wound up working on electronics in the service, where I had some problems with a used car I had. Took it to a mechanic, since I had no tools or skills, and got my own spark plugs back for ten bucks, in a car that only ran slightly better. That made me mad, so I got a manual and started collecting tools. Eventually solved the problem myself. That kinda told me that I could do whatever I set my mind to. Nowadays I have a small fleet of cars for my family and little time, or money, to maintain them all properly. If I would have had newer vehicles, I likely wouldn't have had to work on them as much, so whether that would have been better for me financially or not still remains to be seen. Folks used to ask me if I liked working on cars. "Only when I don't have to." is my usual response. Once my family and financial situation settled down, I got my piece of the American dream and bought a home. I used to be a whole lot better at this kind of thing, and could do a good job, but recently have started to try and balance what I can do, what I could do, what I'll really do, and it's really something I could do better. Having a major unfinished, unscheduled major home repair (rotted kitchen subfloor. Overhauled the cabinets since replacing them with equivalent quality was cost prohibitive, laid down new sub floor and underlay, but have temporary vinyl tile on the floor and counters now) I'm to the point where I have to come to grips with my abilities versus my time, and the cost of the two. I think many people are in that sort of situation, but for some, money is easier to throw at a situation, and for some, money is the thing they have the least, so they have to do it themselves, albeit poorly. I used to have a job that didn't stimulate me much mentally, so there was plenty of time to ponder things I wanted to do and so on. I have a very cool new job that sends me home wiped out mentally, so I rarely feel inclined to deal with that list of things to do. Haven't touched it in weeks. Gotta figure out where I can find the round tuits now that I used to have. I'm starting to have some sympathy with those folks, and I don't really have a single thing to blame it on. Sort of how things have turned out.
We sort of went through this awhile back. Americans existed happily on the east coast, crowded into cramped cities, when the US government started offering free land west of the Mississippi. I'm sure each family that headed out had a book or two that explained how to make a living in the middle of nowhere with little more than what you could have carried with you in a wagon. Likely even explained what to bring in the wagon, too.
Sort of got me thinking about a series of how-to books for stuff, but most of that is on the web now, since that's the first place most folks go for information, even if it's really generic and useless to the rest of us. Perhaps what needs to be out there is a non-condescending tome about how to find/acquire the core skills that most of us take for granted when we tackle a new task, such as righty tighty, doing a visual, gathering information first, and so on. That bit is missing from every book I've ever read on how to do stuff, but how to approach such a subject is actually a whole lot harder than it sounds.
==================== While increasing technologies may indeed provide options, redundancies, etc, these are of use only if people know (1) they are available, and (2) how to use them.
While increasing societal "complexity" is a separate issue, the rapidil accelerating decline in trust and trustworthiness is not and it is THE critical and most problematic in the so-called symbolic manipulation [interesting word choice] areas such as stocks, bonds, pensions, insurance, and currency trading.
Unka George (George McDuffee)
...and at the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: ?A Fool lies here, who tried to hustle the East.?
Rudyard Kipling The Naulahka, ch. 5, heading (1892).
======================= You are very fortunate in that your schools appear to be run by educators and not administrators. The students and community are fortunate in that the board members are acting in the best interest of the majory of the students and community and not responding to the latest fad or buzz-word.
My guess is that you leadership is very senior and approaching retirement. When your educators are replaced with administrators that conduct per pupil class cost evaluations, legal risk evaluation of possible injury, and avoidance of things that make noise or a mess, your vocational programs will die the death of
1,000 cuts. I note in passing that far more students are injured and injured more seriously in contact sports than vocational education.Most universities have dropped their Industrial Arts teachining options because of the falling demand for their graduates.
Fearless forecast -- as your vocational programs are scaled back, your student retention and completion problems will increase. Following normal administrator logic, additional vocational programs will be eliminated to make funds available for retention/completion activities and remedial education that are then required to keep the now totally academic programs filled.
Unka George (George McDuffee)
...and at the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: ?A Fool lies here, who tried to hustle the East.?
Rudyard Kipling The Naulahka, ch. 5, heading (1892).
| Oh my God! Does this mean all my woodshop classes for next year | (2006-07) at the high school where I teach have been dropped? Does this | mean I am now out of work? Are my fellow IA teachers who teach masonry, | auto shop and computer repair also out of work? Do we now hold our | department meetings at the unemployment office? | | The scenario you present might be true in some places, but not in all. | I have been asked (along with a few of my cohorts)to work on a funding | grant to expand our vocational offerings in our school, and maybe the | district as a whole. | | Glen
In the Seattle area, the aerospace community has been complaining for several years about just that, and it isn't until the concrete heads in the legislature realized they were chasing all the skilled labor and shops out of state have they realized what a skill shortage there is. A day late and a dollar short, but better late than never. Unfortunately, when I hired on at Boeing, with a million others barely able to breathe, they trained me on company time. Got a whole lot of useless folks in the process. This time, they're training the new hires on their time, for two weeks. A coworker of mine got hit in the head by a fast moving rivet die. Seems the gal she was teaching thought it was okay to put the die in the gun while holding the trigger down. Absent the retainer spring, of course. As soon as she did it the second time, just minutes later, they told her to take a hike. That's why they're doing it differently this time around, as the dead wood gets weeded out quickly. They aren't kicking people out for not having the skills, they're removing them for not having a trainable attitude.
I recently got a very cool new job. One of the reasons I got the job was the last line on my resume: "With the right attitude all skill deficits can be overcome." That impresses the hell out of folks, especially when your attitude seems to match the resume. (I once had the honor of bringing onto my crew an older Greek lady who had no skills but just the exact attitude I wanted. She worked her ass off and made the folks who had been around for years look like amateurs once I taught her what she needed to know.) I had also showed them pictures of some machines I had recently built, which the interviewers (a structured interview with several folks there) were almost fighting over. They wanted someone who could "do things" instead of just talking about stuff. My fingernails being a bit chewed up and slightly dirty helped a bit, I suspect.
Yes we may and that they do. Guilty as charged!:)
's OK, I'll handle the leftovers. :) Cholesterol on the hoof, but what a way to go!
And for the organ meat crowd: Smithville Restaurant in Smithville, OH, not far from here, makes a serving of seasoned, breaded, deep fried chicken livers that melts in your mouth and tastes like heaven on a fork. At least they do if they're still in business.
Coronary Artery Disease on the hoof -- or wing as the case may be -- but, again, what a way to go! :)
That was one place one could go and suddenly realize that every stick of wood in the building was American Chestnut, wall paneling included. The doorjambs, window sashes and frames were probably worth than my whole house. :)
Was the electricity out for six months? Nation wide? It is possible.
TV's can be repaired, but it probably not cost effective unless you enjoy puzzles. My wife does crossword puzzles, I do different kinds of puzzles. Yesterday I repaired the dishwasher. One of the hinges had fatigued and failed. It was less work to remove the door and hinge, weld the hinge, and reassemble than it would have been to go buy another dishwasher and install it.
If you are looking for lawn mower parts, look on Ebay. Lots of places that sell things as pistons and rings at reasonable prices.
Cars may not break as often, but they do still have problems. I need to pull the gasolene tank on my truck and fix the fuel gauge sensor. It won't take a well appointed home mechanic workshop to do most of it. Fixing the sensor might. Have not seen what the problem is.
But are these basic skills in todays world. To me basic skills today are more about how to determine who is a good dentist, auto mechanic, plumber, etc. How to use Ebay and Craigslist, to find the things you want and need. Figuring out what stocks to buy is more important than being able to create you own well. Knowing how to find information when you need it is a basic skill.
Dan
I don't now, but I have hunted and fished, I can build a fire from scratch, I can toss together basic shelter in a rush, but if it comes to the point we need to do something like this, even in a rural area like mine, where do, for example, the 98,000 residents of Roanoke and the 65,000 people in Lynchburg go to nail a deer (or turkey, or, failing all else, a possum), grub up some branches and get a fire going, rip the branches off cedars and pines, and dig slit trenches, but...the sanitary arrangements alone for today's population in central and southern and western Virginia would be a major feat that probably cannot be accomplished without technology. The same holds true for clean drinking water when the wells go out. My county has 754 square miles, but also about 60,000 residents now, many of whom are true city boys and girls who never spent day one in the military, either. They're living their rural dream in their McMansions, but that dream of theirs may become a nightmare for all of us, unless things keep ticking over in the current kindly manner.
And this would probably be one of the better areas in the east, should a catastrophe occur.
Now consider yourself being without fuel for 3 or 4 months or much longer. You merely made best of a minor inconvenience. If real trouble came that shut down fuel production for months you too would soon feel the effects.
Yes, I would. But would it mean the end of American society? I don't think so. I know how to do for myself without many things. Moreover, I've seen many a disaster come and go, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, 9/11, etc, up close and personal. It's my job. One thing I have learned is that our society's coping mechanisms are quite robust.
Jeff
(snips)
Sometimes it doesn't. At the height of the Roman Empire, Rome had a population of around 1,000,000. By the late Middle Ages, that was down to less than 10,000, and wolves were roaming the streets. Various other societies have gone through collapses that were as bad, if not worse. Contrary to what we like to think, things can, in fact, go Very Badly. There is no reason to suppose that we are somehow immune.
I'm not talking about going through an economic shift, but an economic/societal collapse. Different story...
-- Robert Sturgeon Summum ius summa inuria.
I didn't mean to be specific about roofing, or any other particular skill.
You could be right. I just don't see wireless routers and such as being critical parts of the post-post-modern economy. I hope we don't find out.
-- Robert Sturgeon Summum ius summa inuria.
Yep. No society is immune from collapse. My point is only that technologically advanced societies are much less so. So, do you think anyone alive at the height of the Roman Empire was still alive to see those wolves roaming the streets? No. It took a very long time indeed, for Roman society to decline and fall. It didn't suddenly collapse within a portion of a single lifetime, like, say, the Incan Empire.
Time to define our terms, I think. So, what does an economic/societal collapse mean to you?
Personally, I expect American society to die with a whimper, not a bang, over a span of many generations, in a way that is not readily apparent to many who are living through it.
Jeff
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.